Being Vegan Says So Much More About You Than Just Your Ethics

Being Vegan Says So Much More About You Than Just Your Ethics
Are you who you eat? Photographee.eu/Shutterstock

Revered French gastronome Jean Brillat-Savarin coined the phrase: “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are”. He wasn’t wrong. If you’re someone who thinks about your food choices, its probably in terms of health or ethics. But they are also intimately connected with identity, class, and ideology.

Kosher and Halal foods are a signal of religious affiliation. Caviar and gold leaf hint at wealth. The enjoyment of wine has as much to do with what it’s served in as its taste.

But what of meat? Due to its cost, meat consumption in Western societies has been linked with higher status, power, wealth and masculinity for centuries.

In medieval England, peasant diets would be almost wholly vegetarian. Meat was the preserve of royal and aristocratic households, where the hunt became part of male rites of passage, but also power over the natural world. This gendered and class-based structuring of access to meat continued well into the second half of the 20th century, since the best cuts were reserved for the patriarch of the family.


 Get The Latest By Email

Weekly Magazine Daily Inspiration

Being Vegan Says So Much More About You Than Just Your Ethics
Anyone for venison? James Gillray/Wikimedia Commons

In many ways, veganism challenges these traditions. Vegans, for instance, are more likely to be young and female than old and male. The lifestyle also challenges traditional norms of masculinity. And instead of the hedonistic consumption associated with the upper classes, veganism is associated with restraint and discipline.

Yet, this restraint comes with its own social implications. As our new research shows, plant-based diets come with burdens – and successfully navigating them can help vegans to promote an image of upward mobility in contemporary consumer society.

We first studied how veganism was represented in more than 2,000 articles in the UK media. Then we conducted 20 in-depth interviews with middle-class consumers who were either vegans or closely acquainted with vegans. We mapped how they perceived veganism, including its relationship to class and character. Analysing data from the interviews and the media together, we identified five key burdens associated with the vegan lifestyle, and the social signals that successfully navigating them sends.

Vegan burdens

The first burden relates to knowledge. Vegans generally need to be not only vigilant about ingredients, but able to unpack their meaning for animal welfare, climate change, sustainability, and personal health. The accomplished vegan therefore signals a wealth of knowledge in a society where educational attainment has high social value.

Financial wealth is useful too. Vegan products and replacement ingredients are often expensive, and not within every household’s budget. It is possible to eat vegan cheaply, but doing so costs time for a diet that is already time-intensive – both in terms of shopping and food preparation. Navigating these demands signals that you have at least a little money – or at least time – to spare, as well as efficiency and time management skills, which are desirable qualities in the world of work.

Being Vegan Says So Much More About You Than Just Your EthicsWho am I? Allie Smith/Unsplash, CC BY-SA

Finally, veganism often requires fortitude and discipline – both to deny oneself short-term hedonistic pleasures in the commitment to ethical principles, and to fend off the typical perception of vegans as troublesome or challenging guests. Managing these emotional and social burdens signals resilience and goal-seeking behaviour in a competitive environment, and the likely presence of a strong social network support.

Crafting the vegan self

Consumers are rarely actively pursuing social goals when going vegan. But at a sociological level, it does present opportunities to communicate personal attributes that are considered useful in contemporary society: knowledgeable, disciplined, able to support oneself, but also able to form social connections. Rather than only engaging with food for pleasure, our respondents recognised that the challenges of veganism can be used to signal social status and, if originating from a lower socioeconomic class, an upward trajectory in one’s fortunes.

Of course, the ethical and environmental aspects are still – for many people – the major motivation to be vegan. But as other recent research of ours shows, thanks to recent celebrity uptake of the diet, veganism is no longer a purely moral movement at the periphery of society, but also a desirable lifestyle choice considered trendy in mainstream culture. Indeed, Beyoncé’s undertaking of a 22-day vegan challenge helped interest in veganism to explode – despite her wearing leather and fur to a restaurant during the challenge.

The ethos of veganism itself is an admirable and strongly held altruistic conviction among many of its practitioners – but it also plays an important role in curating your personal image. Perhaps Brillat-Savarin’s dictum should now read: “Tell me who you want to be and I will tell you what to eat!”The Conversation

About the Author

Thomas Robinson, Lecturer in Marketing at Cass Business School, City, University of London and Outi Lundahl, Assistant Professor of Marketing, University of Groningen

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

books_healthy_diet

AVAILABLE LANGUAGES

English Afrikaans Arabic Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Danish Dutch Filipino Finnish French German Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Indonesian Italian Japanese Korean Malay Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Spanish Swahili Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese

follow InnerSelf on

facebook icontwitter iconyoutube iconinstagram iconpintrest iconrss icon

 Get The Latest By Email

Weekly Magazine Daily Inspiration

Thursday, 15 April 2021 13:22

Skin brushing is a highly effective technique for cleansing the lymphatic system. Topics covered in this article: Benefits of Skin Brushing; What type of skin brush is the best to use; How to Brush...

Wednesday, 21 April 2021 07:23

Whether it’s your arthritic relative who knows rain is on the way when their knees ache or your lifelong pal who gets a headache when a storm is approaching, we all know somebody who claims they...

Saturday, 08 May 2021 08:43

Humanity has always had a rocky relationship with wasps. They are one of those insects that we love to hate. We value bees (which also sting) because they pollinate our crops and make honey

Friday, 14 May 2021 16:24

The chakras set the frequencies that give rise to every aspect of the human experience. The foods we eat have consciousness and provide an energetic blueprint that stabilizes and entrains...

Friday, 21 May 2021 10:09

The humble potato has been given a bad rap. What was once a cheap staple of many countries’ diets has instead been branded in recent years an “unhealthy” food best avoided.

Wednesday, 19 May 2021 08:07

For many people, the thing they’ve missed most during the pandemic is being able to hug loved ones. Indeed, it wasn’t until we lost our ability to hug friends and family did many realise just how...

New Attitudes - New Possibilities

InnerSelf.comClimateImpactNews.com | InnerPower.net
MightyNatural.com | WholisticPolitics.com | InnerSelf Market
Copyright ©1985 - 2021 InnerSelf Publications. All Rights Reserved.